The Rise and Fall of Becky Sharp. Sarra Manning

The frown was replaced by a mischievous smile. ‘Shall I tell him?’

      ‘I’ll hate you for ever if you do,’ Becky said, noting the way the man began to stab frantically at his touch screen, as if he’d actually heard every word of their conversation.

      It was no wonder that Jos Sedley – the object of Becky’s affection, Amelia’s own brother, and both the brains and the brawn behind A Load Of Balls, the second-largest protein-ball company on the West Coast (soon to make major inroads into the East Coast market too) – had caught Becky’s attention.

      He truly was a sight to behold. A cross-fit addict who could bench press his own weight (two hundred and ten pounds) and a man who hadn’t knowingly eaten a carb in five years, Jos Sedley was triangular in shape. His over-muscled top half, bulging biceps, pecs even perter than Becky’s, strained the seams of his tight T-shirt, which was daringly low cut to show off his stunning he-vage. His spindly, skinny, jeans-clad legs didn’t look able to support all that complex musculature.

      It took a while for Becky’s eye to take it all in and travel adoringly up Jos’s physique, past his thick neck to a face still resolutely fixed on his iPad screen. It wasn’t a distinguished face. If it weren’t for his extraordinary physique, it would be hard to pick Jos out in a police line-up. The only remarkable thing about it was that, like the rest of him, it was somewhere between teak and mahogany on the fake-tan colour spectrum.

      ‘Jos! Nothing on your iPad could be as interesting as my Becky,’ Amelia said and finally Jos looked up from where he’d been studying a new pull-up technique that his personal trainer had devised for him.

      Becky had been gazing down at the Aubusson rug because it would have been rude to keep staring at Jos even though he really was a fascinating sight, but now she looked up too in time to see Jos blush fiercely as their eyes collided.

      ‘Any friend of Emmy’s and all that …’ He muttered awkwardly as he stood up, trying desperately to remember the most appropriate way to greet his sister’s friends. He’d spent his formative years in all-male boarding schools and he’d been a fat kid. A fat, shy kid. Even when there’d been dances with the neighbouring girls’ boarding schools, Jos had stayed on the sidelines, never daring to try and steal a kiss or cop a feel during the last dance. Since moving to LA after an equally unhappy three years at Keele University, Jos had turned his bulk from blubber to muscle but he was still shy. What’s more, he knew he was shy and awkward, so he was instantly suspicious of any woman who showed an interest in him.

      Becky noted the blush, which highlighted Jos’s terracotta face. It seemed to Jos that she could see deep into his soul and evidently what she found wasn’t at all repulsive to her, because she stepped forward and suddenly threw her arms around him.

      There was so much softness pressed against Jos that he hardly knew what to do with himself but all too soon, it was gone. Becky stepped back, hands to her own cheeks, as if she were blushing too, though her blush owed more to the Benefit cheek tint she’d taken from Amelia’s make-up bag that morning. The last thing that Amelia needed was blusher so really Becky had been doing her a favour.

      ‘I’m sorry,’ she apologised to Jos, who was staring at her like a cartoon character who’d just had an anvil dropped on his head. ‘I don’t know what came over me. I’m not normally a hugger, am I, Emmy?’

      ‘Becky’s mother died very young so she has cuddle deficiency syndrome,’ Amelia said, even though Becky had told her that in the strictest confidence in the Big Brother house as eighty cameras filmed their every move.

      ‘But as soon as I saw you, I wanted to hug you,’ Becky said, shrugging helplessly. ‘I’ve behaved like a total idiot, haven’t I?’

      ‘No, no! Not at all. I’m very honoured to have been, er, hugged. You’re a very good hugger. It was a good hug. Best hug I’ve had in a long time.’ Jos held up his hand in despair. ‘Hug. Never realised what a strange word it is before. Hug.’

      ‘A very strange word,’ Becky agreed. ‘But such a nice thing to do.’ She turned to Amelia who had her hands clasped to her chest, her mouth wide in wordless delight that the first meeting of her beloved brother and her BFF had gone far better than she could ever have hoped for. ‘Emmy, do you think you might hug Gorgeous George when you see him again?’

      ‘Gorgeous George? Hug him?’ Jos echoed. His massive chest shook with mirth at the idea. ‘I’d love to see his face if you did, Emmy.’

      Jos’s laugh was infectious. Deep, braying and loud, like the mating cry of an amorous water buffalo. Becky couldn’t help but laugh at the sound of it. Amelia pouted but she could never stay angry for very long and also George would be very surprised if she did suddenly hug him, so she ended up giggling too.

      When Amelia saw George Wylie later that night, it was true that she felt a strong impulse to hug him. But what she secretly wished was that George would be so overcome by the sight of her that he’d be the one to stride over and take her in his arms, kiss her on the forehead and murmur throatily, ‘I’ve missed you, Emmy. Missed you more than I can say.’

      It wasn’t to be. Instead, George slightly inclined his head when Amelia waved frantically at him from across the room, then went back to talking to his friends.

      ‘He’ll probably come over in a bit,’ she said to Becky who had wanted Gorgeous George pointed out to her as soon as Amelia clapped eyes on him. ‘He looks quite busy.’

      ‘And then you’ll be too busy to talk to him,’ Becky said firmly, because although she was many things, most of them not at all good, in times of adversity she could be a great comfort. ‘After all, this is your party.’

      The party was being thrown by Mr and Mrs Sedley in Amelia’s honour, less because she was the winner of a ghastly, low-rent, reality-TV show and more because she was their doted-on only daughter who’d soon be leaving London to return to Durham University for her final year where she might actually scrape through her degree in Art History with a 2.2.

      An army of flunkies had spent most of the day transforming a restaurant in Chelsea into a distressed fairy grotto. There was ivy and other trailing green plants liberally strewn about, along with hundreds upon hundreds of tealights in glass holders. Adorning the rooftop bar was yet more artfully scattered foliage and paper lanterns, and it was there that George Wylie didn’t quite cut Amelia but made it clear that she could wait.

      Amelia was very good at waiting for George. It was a running joke between their two families, that when Amelia Charlotte Louise Sedley was born, she’d marry George Wylie, eldest son of Sir John and Lavinia Wylie. Sir John’s great-great-great-great-great-grandfather had been a self-made man who made his money in the slave trade and bought his baronetcy, a fact which never failed to enrage his great-great-great-great-great grandson who longed to be aristocracy rather than merely landed gentry. The family fortune, built on the backs of men, women and children torn from their homes, had all but gone, most of it sunk into an ancestral pile that had almost killed Sir John’s father when a piece of decayed ornamental masonry had fallen inches away from him.

      Sir John had had to do the unthinkable and restore the family’s failing fortunes by going into trade.

      Trade had been very good to the Wylies, as had Mr Sedley, who’d initially provided capital and investment advice to young Sir John. Now, some thirty years later, George would never have to work a day in his life and could pootle about the estate killing any poor beast that flew across his land, scampered through his forests or swam in his streams.

      However, George wasn’t content with a life of leisure. His years at Eton, then at Oxford (where he’d been a member of an infamous drinking club whose membership initiation involved setting a tramp on fire), were the perfect training for a bright young man from a good family who wanted to go into politics.

      George currently worked at a right-wing think-tank while he and his backers waited for a safe Conservative seat to fall vacant. There was no rush. George wasn’t even thirty, though just as Amelia yearned for him, he yearned to make the Evening